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THE STORE Route 100, Waitsfield, Vermont (802) 496-4465 FAX (802) 496-7719 Est. 1965 Open 10-6 Daily lllllllllllllllllllilllllll Email - info@vennontstore.com 1 Web Site - www.vermontstore.com 38".: T 1*‘ We Buy and Sell Real Antiques P.0. Box 17 Fitzwiliam, NH 03447 on Route 12, 3 miles south of junction of 12& 119 Open seven days a week 10 am to 5 pm 603-585-6688 Gary Taylor Robert Camara Auctioneers License No. 2410 HOENIX RISING " © 1’ spirited jewelry at gifts it gallery open 7 days 34 state street*montpe|ier, vi 05602 802.229.0522 ctixrist Peggy Luhrs the egin in s Pride in e were excited. We were nervous. Would we get a good turnout? Would we be harassed? But we were determined and proud as we set the stage and arranged the balloons for Burlington and Vermont’s very first Lesbian/Gay Pride March. June 25, 1983 was the date. This year’s LGBTQA March will mark 20 years of gay pride in Vermont. A little background on the origin of Pride or Gay Liberation marches, as they were first called, seems appropriate; here are two accounts: A Very Brief Outline of the Stonewall Rebellion uring the last weekend of June of 1969, police and Alcoholic Beverage Control Board agents entered a gay bar - The Stonewall Inn, on Christopher Street, in New York City. Allegedly there to look for violations of the alcohol control laws, they made the usual homophobic comments and then, after checking identification, threw the patrons out of the bar, one by one. Instead of quietly slipping away into the night, as we had done for years, hustlers, drag queens, students and other patrons held their ground and fought back. Someone uprooted a parking meter and used it to barri- cade the door. The agents and police were trapped inside. They wrecked the place and called in reinforce- ments. Their vehicles raced to the scene with lights glaring and sirens blaring. The crowd grew. Someone set a fire. More people came. For three days, people protested. And for the first time, after innumerable years of oppression, the chant, Gay Power, rang out. This event has taken on mythic significance. Many organiza- tions proudly use Stonewall or Christopher Street in their names. During the summer and autumn of 1969, five Gay Liberation Fronts sprang up-in New York, Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Jose. By the end of 1970, three hundred Gay Liberation Fronts had been created. The first demonstration in commemoration of the Stonewall Rebellion was held in New York in August of 1969. Marches were held in 1970 in New York and Los Angeles on the anniversary of the Uprising — and thus, a tradition was born. Since then, annual marches have been held in many cities in the U.S. and in other countries. For many of us, our first march was a turning point in our lives. We came out, we drew strength from those around us, we felt pride in our community. [by Alan Batie: batie@agora.rain.com] The First Pride March bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) activists gathered in New York City for the first-ever pride march to mark the first anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, three days of violent confrontations with police that launched the "gay liberation" move- ment. Since then, GLBT pride marches have spread across the globe; by 1998 they were held in 116 locations in 47 U.S. states and territo- ries, as well as 87 locations in 32 other countries worldwide, including throughout the New York City Metro area. (Excerpted from Body Positive, June 2001, Volume XIV, Number 6) In June 1970, 2000 gay, lesbian, In Burlington years away from being temporari- ly and partially chic. The ERA was defeated that year nationally — and in Vermont it had been defeated by the forces of the Right using bla- tant dyke-baiting tactics. But, a few movies began to explore gay life ever so gingerly. AIDS was just beginning to be known and hadn’t‘really made a mark on Vermont. It wasn‘t even called AIDS yet. Remembering back 20 years, I recall thinking about my own coming out in 1973 and that it was time for Burlington to have its own Pride celebration. I’d been to Pride in New York, even lucky enough to be there the year Bette Midler came to Central Park because she’d been hearing there was dissension at the parade and she wanted to come over and lend support. I’d been to Pride in San Francisco the year after they killed Harvey Milk and Mayor Moscone. It was a huge parade of over 200,000 that year. And Prides were always fun, always a charge to see our strength, numbers and diver- sity. San Francisco Pride parades always lead off with Dykes on Bikes at least 100 strong. But now it was time for Pride in Burlington. I volunteered on the Commonwoman collective. Commonwoman was a feminist paper that published from 1978 to 1984. The name came from some early Judy Grahn poems — and if you don’t know those poems, find them: they ln 1983 lesbians were still 10 are as moving today as when they were first published. We called it an irregular periodical but it basically came out every six weeks and had up to 30 pages of articles, poetry and art work. The Commonwoman (CW) col- lective decided to get Lesbian/Gay pride to happen. Linda Wittenberg and Laurie Larsun and I all worked on it with the whole collective. I wrote a successful grant to Haymarket to organize Pride and put out a special issue of C Vlfdevoted to Lesbian and Gay life in Vermont. We got City Hall Park for the rally. Laurie remembers getting the permit: “The police seemed baf- fled,” she recalls. "‘What kind of pride?’ they asked. ‘Lesbian and Gay pride.’ They weren’t thrilled but we got the permit.” Bernie Sanders was mayor, and we got the City Council to declare it Lesbian/ Gay pride day and waited to see who would show up. 300 people attended Bur1ington’s first pride day. We had balloons, speakers and some home- grown entertainment. There were a few costumes in the parade of mostly dykes. I don’t remember anyone in serious drag. The rally started at two and the parade at three. It was fol- lowed by a potluck picnic at Oakledge and a Women’s Dance at Mcllats. I can’t remember where Mcllats was most likely in a venue like the current Metronome or on the second floor on Main Street I do remember seeing members of the community, friends of Dorothy etc. on the sidelines in sunglasses. A few years later many of them would be comfortable enough to join the march. Certainly marching in Burlington held a lot more risk than marching in New York or Boston. Burlington may be Vermont’s largest city, but it is essen- tially still a small town with all the gossip and interference in one’s life that can mean. One of the men who worked tangentially with the organiz- ing committee was an IBM employ- ee. He marched proudly that day but was not counting on his picture being on the front page of the Free Press. The next time he went to work, his coworkers had the paper spread out on their desks. He handled it with the grace born ofyears of negotiating such moments. But it speaks to the courage of those who did participate in these early pride marches that they risked harassment and loss ofjobs to do so. I believe it was after the second Gay Pride that 21 man was